


a life after war

by LearaBribage



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables (TV 2000), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Cosette and Éponine friendship, EnjonineWeek, EnjonineWeek2019, F/M, Fluff, day 2: hope, enjonine - Freeform, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 09:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20207350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearaBribage/pseuds/LearaBribage
Summary: Éponine and Cosette bond over her feelings for Enjolras.





	a life after war

Éponine closed her book and laid it on the table, her face a pensive mask. She ignored the stinging in her bandaged hand. Beside her, Cosette’s brows furrowed. She would not speak of it. She would _not_.

“What troubles you?”

But Cosette _can_.

She turned towards the baronness. As always, Cosette was dressed daintily, as one would expect from her station. The gown she wore, baby blue in hue, suited her eyes. The gigot sleeves with creases born from perfect pressing — not out of tardy routine and a haphazard home — and the gold buckle weee all polished with ease.

Hers bore the colour of wild fire lilies, and while she admired the colour, when matched with her hair, it made her singular — singular in quite an unpleasant way. But truly, it was the only robe priced modestly at the time she was able to purchase it. Another thing that she ought not to fret about were her rather dull silver wraps — something she still found herself focused on in her desire to re-distribute her melancholy somewhere else.

She let out a sigh. It was unfair to place her uncertainties to someone who’s done their best to befriend someone like her. Eyes cast down, her hands gripped the book tightly.

“You might think me silly for it.”

“I’d like to think you’ve proven yourself more than that, Éponine.”

Éponine found her lips curling, her stiff shoulders relaxing.

“It’s about Enjolras,” she murmured, her fingers hovering over the cover of the book. She traced the fine gold letters of _Esquisse d’un tableu historique des progrès de l’esprit humain_ before she looked outside the window of the Musain.

“I don’t think he sees me as I see him.”

Cosette sipped from her cup, brows rising. “What makes you certain of this?”

“Well, for one, he does not speak to me about it? You know how he is. He does not hesitate to tell me what he thinks or how he feels about certain things.”

“Have you considered,” the baronness said carefully, “that he might be uncertain about you as you are with him?”

Éponine considered this for a bit, her fingers absentmindedly opening the book. “You think that because of that, he has not spoken to me about it?”

“Yes,” she hmmed, tracing the lid of her cup. “I’ve had the same thing occur between Marius and I before we spoke. You cannot simply assume, or else you will wallow in the darkness forever. You have to let it come to light.”

“It’s just—he’s never looked at me like how I looked at him, is what I’m saying, so I don’t—”

“—_please_, he does. Very much so. You just keep missing each other.”

Éponine ignored the incarnadine rush blooming on her cheeks. “It’s, uh, well,” she stammered, “have you seen how he looks at me?”

Cosette nodded. “With hope.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She shifted in her seat and looked away, covering her face. “I knew it,” she whispered, lids falling.

Beside her, Cosette chuckled. “I don’t think I heard that?”

“He told me something once.”

“Hmm. What was it?”

“It was late afternoon, and I was passing by here when I found him at the backroom, looking morose as he stared outside the window, and so I stopped to talk to him. We were arguing about the barricades when he suddenly slipped.”

Cosette could not help the smile from breaking out on her face. “What did he say?”

She swallowed, remembering the intensity of his gaze. How his blue eyes stared at her directly, and how the afternoon sun made his curls look like soft, golden clouds. And how his mouth curled fondly.

“He said, and I only remember it because I wrote it down immediately after I got home, these words, ’You make me hope for a life after war.’”

Éponine rubbed her shoulder when Cosette slapped her quite terribly.

“And you still think he doesn’t see you that way!”

**Author's Note:**

> The title and fic are both inspired from this gifset I made earlier this year: https://viridescentlights.tumblr.com/post/183066606512/viridescentlights-for-decembersiris-enjolras 
> 
> Treat this fic as something that occurred months after that, ahaha.
> 
> \--
> 
> Also the book Éponine was holding is the Marquis de Condorcet's "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind". 
> 
> Earlier, I used the same book in my other story called "i'm death-defying": https://archiveofourown.org/works/12065841
> 
> You could look at this as an extension of that as well. 
> 
> ^_^


End file.
